Journal of AIDS & Clinical Research

Sampling and Estimation in Hidden Population Using Social Network

Abstract

Yang Zhao

Characteristics of hidden populations (e.g. population of injection drug users) cannot be studied using standard sampling and estimation procedures. This article considers methods for estimating the population proportion of hidden population using social network. We compare the sampling and estimation technique of respondent-driven sampling with the simplified sampling procedure based on Markov-chain model and discusses the equivalence of these procedures. These procedures fail to provide formulae for estimating the variances of their estimators due to the complexities of their methods. We describe a simplified sampling procedure for collecting data on both the population and its social network, and provide a simple formula to estimate the population proportion efficiently. We further derive a formula to compute an estimate of the variance of the proposed estimator using the delta method. Simulation study is provided to illustrate the new sampling and estimation method.